THE CRETACEOUS SYSTEM 321 



governed by the local conditions. Whether during the 

 later part of the period, represented by beds that have 

 mostly been swept away by denudation, all the outliers 

 were connected, and sediments were spread over the 

 whole of the district in which the outliers occur as well 

 as beyond its limits, must be left to the future to decide. 

 It is quite possible that evidence sufficient to settle the 

 question will be forthcoming. 



Whether this was the case or not, the absence of 

 transverse valleys in the Langebergen filled with the 

 Uitenhage beds is specially worthy of note, for it shows 

 that the Oudtshoorn basin was then quite distinct from 

 the valleys south of the Langebergen, and that the 

 rivers which now traverse that range had no existence 

 in those days. The Uitenhage beds both north and 

 south of the Langebergen extend below the present 

 level of the Gamka-Gouritz River bed, and the disloca- 

 tions undergone by the Uitenhage beds in those areas 

 do not seem to be great enough to account for the 

 complete isolation of the beds on either side of the 

 mountains ; the sharply defined gorges of the Gouritz 

 River through the Gamka hills and Langebergen seem 

 to have been cut since Uitenhage times, for they con- 

 tain no outlier of the rocks that one would expect to 

 find had they been of Pre- Uitenhage age. 



Considering generally our present knowledge of the 

 Uitenhage beds, it leads to the conclusion that the de- 

 pression of the area as a whole, which allowed the sea 

 to encroach upon the previous land surface in the 

 Uitenhage district, was not uniform, but that the grade 



of some of the valleys was at the same time altered, 



21 



